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Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philosophical interpretation of classical physics

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The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the debate was no consensus. Most people want it deleted in some way, but even that is basically even. NC. Woohookitty(cat scratches) 11:41, 5 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Philosophical interpretation of classical physics

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Original Research Trödel|talk 02:13, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

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  • Delete A well written, if legnthy, explanation of why idiots like me need Quantum Mechanics explained to them in philosophical terms. He's probably right, however, Wikipedia WP:ISNOT a publisher of original thought. --CastAStone 02:35, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't delete It seems to be a question of how closely one should follow one's sources. I started the article to balance what seems an outdated and error-prone point of view in other Wikipedia articles (and to learn how to teach physics), and it has progressed nicely.
As a compromise, I suggest:
Suppose we rename Interpretation of quantum mechanics to History of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, rename this article to "Subtleties of the relation between quantum an classical descriptions of nature", and archive this entire article and re-write it, closer to its text book sources but without plagiarizing?
There is good historical material in that other article, but its title, as it is, is misleadingly outdated. Its category would change from physics to history of physics.
Part of the objective for the new article should be to help understand entanglement, if possible.
Text book authors work hard to make it believable to people who did not grow up exposed to quantum mechanics, and maybe there is much more of that quality that can be taken without adhering too closely. This would allow this article to be checked paragraph by paragraph against its sources, as people here want, but would still be representative of a modern view.
Of course, I would prefer that this be done incrementally.
There are other article with similar outdated classical point of view.
David R. Ingham 11:40, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think Interpretation of quantum mechanics is appropriate given what most readers know, and where they expect to find, and that articles should not be titled to make a a point as you're suggesting. I also think it is more appropriate to edit articles you think are wrong than to write a new article on the same subject so that you can treat it the way you want. Hence my merge vote below. -- SCZenz 20:10, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Several remarks.
1) this article appears to be about QM and not classical physics. There is such a thing as the philosophy of classical mechanics, but this article does not appear to actually discuss any of it (Everything I've seen on the philosophy of classical mechanics dealt with the nature of determinism, since solutions to differential equations seem to imply determinism. More recently, that philosophy wanders off to discuss chaotic dynamics. I've never seen it discuss QM). So at a minimum, this article needs to be renamed to philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics,
2) This article could be named philosophical failures of classical mechanics if it was enlarged to talk about non-quantum issues, e.g. chaos, or the impact of special/general relativity to classical concepts of time and space. or e.g. Mach principle. There's no discussion of the (non-)constancy of constants, (for example, the electric charge varies with distance, or e.g. asymptotic freedom) (for example, the speed of light is locally constant, but the amount of time it takes for light to cross a de Sitter universe is something like 3 times the size of the universe, implying that in a certain sense "light slows down" when thought about in a global way, as the universe expands. Locally, the speed of light is just a conversion from time units to space units. Globally it is something quite different.). There's no discussion of mass, where mass comes from, why there's more matter than anti-matter, etc. Why the universe isn't rotating. No discussion of why time is one dimensional but space isn't. No mention of Kaluza-Klein theories as alternate conceptions of space and time.
3) While it does discuss some of the actual issues the differentiate QM from classical, it is written in an 'original research' style. Its a very unusual presentation of only a small subset of the topics that are usually discussed. I won't vote for deletion, but the article has failings as currently structured. linas 14:21, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • In answer to the above 1), I think a better title can be found but it is not "philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics" or "interpretation of quantum mechanics". The probabilities encountered when using an approximation to a theory belong to the approximation and not to the theory, even if it is an approximation without which one cannot get out of bed. I don't argue with 2) 3). Feel free to change the style of my parts of it. I agree with merging and changing the title to something new. David R. Ingham 20:27, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I wonder exactly why the nominator is calling this original research (this is an honest question, not a veiled attack on the nomination)? Is it just the style in which it is written or is there more to it? It quotes more references that the average Wikipedia article. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 15:24, 26 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the core of the POV of David R. Ingham, i.e. the core of the article as originally written, pertains to discussions supposedly in Albert Messiah's two volume Quantum Mechanics. Messiah is given as the researcher whose views the article is said to report, but Ingham has not responded to repeated requests to provide the citation. The thought experiment that Messiah supposedly discusses is generally known as Heisenberg's Microscope (Google for many articles that do not support Ingham's account), and it was important in the early development of quantum physics. It pertains to the problems involved in using a photon to measure the position of an electron. Articles and books pertaining to this thought experiment generally provide a diagram. Messiah's book is very well written, and very well indexed. Reading all the materials indexed under "electron" does not uncover the discussion that Ingham claims as the basis for his report. Searching the index for Heisenberg's Microscope provides nothing at all. Scanning the entire book for diagrams related to any experiment in which a photon is bounced off of an electron in an attempt to learn about it also yields no positive results. In the absence of a citation to the assertions that are at the core of the issue, the actual authorship of the assertions appears to rest with Ingham.
As for the numerous citations, I think I have provided most of them. The several citations I supplied apply only to peripheral issues, to statements of the sort that I would regard almost as common knowledge, and certainly not to the controversial thesis advanced by Ingham. For me, the biggest problem in dealing with this article is that the core article, the material that appears to imply that Greene and other current writers on the subject have it wrong, is extremely unclear. I, for one, cannot help to make it any clearer without a look at the original sources from which this account was derived. Messiah is one source and Ingham's lecture notes from quite some time ago on the account of a university physics professor appear to be the other source -- a source that is quite naturally unavailable. P0M 02:05, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If my guessimate of the meaning of Ingham's thesis is correct, then this article would be antithetical to another article Quantum_indeterminacy. P0M 03:53, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Measuring electrons with photons is in there in Messiah, at least once. I will look where. I had been thinking that looking at new sources would be more useful than arguing about old ones. He uses this example at least to make the point that if one had classical light to measure with, qm would not stand, because the measuring device would violate the uncertainty principle. (Feynman also very briefly mentions this.)
If that's all Messiah says then how does it support the contentions that he is supposedly propping up? And where does Feynman make his brief mention, please? P0M 07:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Did you possibly mean the passage in Messiah, I, p. 143 f.? P0M 08:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I think the central issues are that the earlier one accepts qm, the easier it is, from an educational point of view, and that, from an academic point of view, that the most reliable sources for an encyclopedia are usually text books, graduate level in case of dispute—other sources are too hard to sort through and evaluate. (I need advice on how closely they should be followed.) Verbal discussions are good except that arguments about them can't be settled.
Accepting these assumptions, the point of view that classical mechanics needs to be described from a quantum point of view and not visa versa will eventually prevail, in some form, whether I persist or not.
The next step is to read more recent text books, not to go backward.
I do not accept the view that because this is cryptic, to even some physicists, it is inappropriate for the reader who looks this far. One should hear how things really are, in simple words, as soon as possible, even if it takes time to understand. Simplify if you like, but don't write or keep things that are not entirely accurate.
David R. Ingham 05:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wikipedia is not the place to push a non-standard view of how physics should be taught. You arguments suggest that this is original research, on pedagogy, if not on physics. If you want to write an article on an alternate approach to teaching QM, and cite sources, that's one thing; but picking Wikipedia as a ground for trying out a new approach is not what this place is for. I also disagree with your views, but that's a discussion for another forum. -- SCZenz 06:23, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Userfy (that is, move to a page like User:David R. Ingham/Philosophical interpretation of classical physics). Based on the comments of P0M and, more importantly, David R. Ingham himself, the article is too close to a personal essay for me. Furthermore, the article appears to be a content fork, since David prefers creating a separate article instead of fixing (perceived) shortcomings in existing articles. However, obviously much work has gone into the article and we might want to merge some of the material into other articles, though it is not immediately clear to me what we want to merge. That is why I'm not proposing a straightforward delete, but a move outside of the main article space. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 21:15, 27 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Make user friendly. I have no idea what he's saying in this article. The subject needs to be presented in a way us stupid people can understand. I feel extremely stupid reading this article. None of this makes any sense. Make it stupid-people friendly, you know, Quantum Physics for Dummies or something. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde 01:59, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about your proposed titles. I always hate the dismissive attitude of "xyz for Dummies" books, but your idea in essence is not bad. There are a couple of problem in talking about this kind of stuff. (1) The behavior of things on this very small scale is not what we expect to see. If prisoners in cement block cells were found in some small percentage of cases to "evaporate" from their cells and "materialize" outside the prison wall, we would not even consider any possibility other than that trickery was involved. But that's what electrons can do. (2) The way of talking about things that allows us to even begin to make sense out of things can involve complicated mathematics. But it isn't impossible to talk sensibly about what is going on. Greene's Fabric of the Cosmos does an excellent job. I think the ideal Beginners Guide article would describe some of the basic phenomena and perhaps tell people how to do experiments that would show them some of the weird stuff. Now that laser pointers are available for tens of dollars rather than hundreds of dollars, everybody can make his/her own double-slit apparatus. (I just made one a week or so ago with a plastic box, some nails, and some toy plastic railroad tracks. Since I already had the laser pointer, my out of pocket expenses were $2 to buy the plastic items at the local "dollar store."}
Many if not most of the physics articles jump in at or near the deep end of the pool, use undefined symbols in mathematical statements of principles, etc. There is no way for, e.g., a high school student with no calculus and nothing more than a general science course in hand to have the foggiest idea of what is going on.
Probably there needs to be consideration of this issue on the "project" level.
Never forget the power of one and the value of σ  ;-) P0M 02:55, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there is Quantum Mechanics - simplified. -- SCZenz 05:49, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Although I still have doubts about whether this article can be saved from its original research nature, I do think the subject matter should be covered somewhere - and maybe already is. I have attempted to rewrite the intro to make it more accessible - please comment. Trödel|talk 12:18, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The part of that article on measurement is incomprehensible. I have no trouble with Reichenbach, Messiah, Pauli, Greene..., but I have no idea what is being asserted there. I think I have found the part of Messiah's textbook that was given as authority, but it does not even suggest answers to my questions. There may be people here who know what he is talking about because they know the subject so well that undefined terms and terms that are wikified to explanations that do not apply in context of that paragraph will nevertheless be clear to them. So I am going to put my comments on the discussion page to this page. Maybe somebody will be able to clear things up. If not, it will be clear evidence of what is wrong with the argument. P0M 14:11, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Done. See the discussion page.P0M 16:22, 29 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Trödel, I have made some progress with the introduction, and have also suggested that the title be changed. I have received no help from experts who may be able to intuit what the author is trying to say in the measurement section. Please comment. P0M 04:55, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Oy vey. I'll take a look at it, or get someone else at physics to. -- SCZenz 06:29, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I just looked, and I have to say I don't think it can be rewritten to be readable by people who don't understand quantum mechanics already, at least not without destroying much of the information in the article (heh). I really don't understand what the purpose of the approach is—the author seems to want to teach quantum mechanics by assuming people know it already. -- SCZenz 06:31, 31 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The "radical" didactic principle is that one should stick to the real facts when simplifying, even if people get less of a feeling of understanding at the time they read it, because unlearning is harder than learning. For a physics article in an encyclopedia, this means avoiding physics from popular sources that can't be justified with references to high level text books. I have illustrated this by an example of an error in Physics Today caused by not following this principle.
The least I may have accomplished is to call people's attention to this. David R. Ingham 11:59, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
If the topic can not be explained at all without the use of jargon that is not accessible to reasonably intelligent people then the article needs to be edited to remove the jargon or removed. No one has claimed that we have to use "popular sources" only that the material be sufficiently explained and that it be notable enough to be referenceable. For example, only recently have you even identified the thesis of the article, "Philosophical interpretation of classical physics is a discussion of the spurious content in the classical description." (I think that is the intended thesis - correct me if I misunderstood).
The reason I am even spending time on this is because I do think that the idea that I think the article wants to convey is very interesting. I.e. that classical physics was so pervasive in our society and thinking that it influenced other disciplines in unexpected ways. Additionally, because the extrapolations of classical physics were not correct in their predictions QM was developed. Unfortunately, however, the influence of classical physics on other disciplines did not completely disappear when QM was introduced and other disciplines still make assumptions based on classical physics that have since been proven to not properly describe nature. If this can be explained well then PICP will be an excellent article. Trödel|talk 12:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete - While I normally lean towards inclusionist, I think that the inability to produce references for the main thesis of this article has pushed me over to delete. If someone wants to userfy or merge some content first, I'm cool with that, too. — Laura Scudder | Talk 16:13, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep - the article title seems a perfectly valid one, and not intrinsically OR. I've hacked it extensively & little of the original now remains. What I'm not sure of is if the material is essentially duplicated elsewhere. William M. Connolley 19:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC).[reply]
  • Move to wikinfo.org, where original research is ALLOWED. GangofOne 03:17, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Userfy - As it stands, the article seems to represent a more personal than historical view. I think it perhaps the original author should keep it on his own space until he clarifies all points (especially the classical mechanics vs. QM) as well as his sources. I would be okay with a merge with Interpretation of quantum mechanics. --Dataphiliac 00:33, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Why is language dominant

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If we put some dummy headings in, we wouldn't have to edit the whole page at once. - Done above :)

As a dyslectic, I am offended by the assumption that language should be dominant. About physics, what cannot be justified mathematically should be deleted. What people don't understand only wastes their time.David R. Ingham 06:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is that the only method we have for communicating complex scientific ideas to a non-initiate is through the use of language. Using mathematical descriptions is great as long as the "language" of mathematics is spoken by the intended audience. In this case it is not; thus, we revert to explaining in the language that we share in common with the audience.
I would check out wikicities or other available resources for communicating in a more structured, scientific fashion. Trödel|talk 10:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wrapping up / Tally

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It looks like at best we have a concensus to save the language somewhere (merge or userfy) and delete/redirect the current article. I am going to post another notice on the Physics WikiProject to see if we can get some more input from knowledgeable editors. As nominator I still think the article reads too much like a personal essay and original research - so I listed myself as delete below - although I strongly support moving content to userspace with edit history and listing the article at the Physics WikiProject to see if anything more can be done to make the article more accessible and encyclopedic. Trödel|talk 10:11, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In the interest of full disclosure - I have solicited opinions from all the Physics WikiProject participants (who have not already opined) directly on their talk page Trödel|talk 10:29, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Keep

  1. User:David R. Ingham
  2. User:MarSch
  3. William M. Connolley

Merge (i.e. keep the article's content but to move it into some more appropriate article and redirect)

  1. User:SCZenz "...with Interpretation of quantum mechanics"
  2. User:prashanthns "...don't delete"
  3. User:Patrick0Moran With the most recent changes there is little left even to merge.

Delete

  1. User:CastAStone
  2. User:Carnildo
  3. User:Trödel
  4. User:Karol Langner
  5. Laura Scudder

Userfy (i.e. keep the article's content but move it to the user space and delete)

  1. User:Jitse_Niesen
  2. User:SCZenz
  3. (P0M) (Recommend Ingham recover his original material, move it to his user space, and then work from valid citations back to whatever he is trying to communicate.)
  4. User:Dataphiliac (wouldn't mind merge)

Comments

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I think a lot of the article makes a lot of sense. Basically it states that since we still insist on Newtonian mechanics which is flawed at the atomic level to describe experiments and what we measure, a probabilistic description is what we obtain. If we also knew the exact quantum state of our measuring equipment there would be no probabilities. I guess if there is a Copenhagen interpretation, then this article is also justified as an alternate interpretation and possible way out of the measuring problem. I wouldn't say there is any original research since it is a completely obvious alternative. I would like a better title like .... interpretation of quantum mechanics. Merging with Interpretation of quantum mechanics is also acceptable. --MarSch 10:51, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Can't this point be made in a few sentences? Isn't it already made in other articles? Karol 11:10, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A delete would also be acceptable to me, since it seemed more and more like OR on education as the discussion went on. I don't know if it's still appropriate to change my vote, though, so I'm just noting that here. -- SCZenz 15:59, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Changed my vote to "userfy." I suspect that the author was trying to say something in the original core of the article that may be worthwhile. If it were put in clear mathematics complemented by clear Engish, then there would be a fair basis for deciding what it means and whether it is at least the point of view on or interpretation of somebody like Bohm.P0M 03:41, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

And changed it again, assuming that the article is what is left of the original after William M. Conolley's edit. If the original author had a contribution to make, despite his difficulties in communicating, that contribution has been eroded away. Of what is left, there is nothing that should not have been well covered elsewhere. P0M 20:09, 3 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I've just hacked most of it out and replaced it with my own interpretation, which is hopefully the mainstream one, though I'm open to correction. It could do with more by experts. But the basic idea seems sensible and not OR; Karol suggested that these points were made elsewhere: are they? William M. Connolley 19:42, 3 November 2005 (UTC).[reply]

I like the style alot better, but it still reads like a "blah-blah" essay to me. In any case, I can't see why we should have a page with such a pretentious title when, for startes, classical physics is almost a stub (see my comment in the voting section also). Karol 06:38, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to argue this too strongly - I don't really care all that much. But I don't think that just because CP is nearly a stub this should go. If CP is a stub then there is an awful lot of other stuff that should go into it before this does, or it will be very unbalanced. William M. Connolley 09:38, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Karol, basically. The original article seemed to have something to say about aspects of QM that may fail to get adequate coverage in popularizations like Amir D. Aezel's Entanglement. Now there is nothing that is not already in other QM articles. If there was anything of value hidden in the original article behind the extremely muddy writing, it exists only in the history of the article now. I tried very hard, spending probably 30 hours reading my collection of physics books that goes back to the 60s, trying to get a line onto what he was really trying to communicate. I tried many times in many ways to get Ingham to give citations or clarifications. All of this I did in the hope we would not come to the point where anything of value would be edited away as incomprehensible. That's why I think the original article should be recovered from history and userfied. P0M 15:27, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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